No LTE Speeds for New iPads in Singapore

Apple's newly announced iPads will be coming to Singapore on 16th March, and like its US release, these iPads will come with HSPA and LTE support.

We just received word from M1, one of the three telcos in Singapore, that the company will be selling the new iPad model on 16th March, with or without contract. The price plans will be announced at launch, and based on the previous two launches, there shouldn't be any huge fluctuation in the price plans.

Both StarHub and SingTel haven't been able to comment on when it'll be selling the iPad. But based on what we saw on the Apple Singapore site, which listed the three carriers in the page, we should be looking at the same 16th March launch date for all three telcos,

Now here's the bad news: if you're hoping to enjoy the fast download speeds of 73Mbps through the LTE connection on the iPad, M1 has confirmed with us that this is not possible.

This is due to the fact that the iPad operates on the 700MHz and 2100MHz frequency bands. Within Singapore, M1 has stated that its LTE networks operate on the 1800MHz and 2600MHz bands, thus making it incompatible with the iPad's frequency bands.

SingTel has also confirmed that its LTE network operates on the same 1800MHz and 2600MHz frequency bands, while StarHub hasn't announced any specific details on its plans for LTE development

Here's the good news - the new iPad will run on the existing HSPA network. Based on the technical specifications, it has HSPA+ that can attain 21Mbps download speeds and DC-HSPA with a 42Mbps download speed.

That means it's possible to subscribe to a multi SIM and utilize your existing mobile broadband plans, but that is dependent on the connection speeds set by the telcos. For example, when the iPhone 4S was launched in 2011, the three telcos' bundled its price plans with a faster 14.4Mbps connection instead of the 7.2Mbps that was used for its earlier iPhones.